West Coast Methods Institute

Following the International Lonergan Congress
held at Santa Clara University in 1984, which was organized by Timothy P.
Fallon and P. Boo Riley, Tim Fallon suggested the creation of an institute
devoted to collaborative inquiry into interiority and transcendence, informed
and guided by Lonergan’s work. The aims of the West
Coast Methods Institute reflected Tim Fallon's commitment to the Lonergan program of a philosophy founded in attention to
the subject-as-subject and open to the religious dimension of human living. The
primary activity of the Institute since its inception has been the organization
and sponsorship of an annual conference. Unlike traditional academic
conferences, these meetings have been relatively small and their format relatively
informal, allowing for and promoting friendly dialogue and discussion among the
participants. After Tim Fallon's death, the remaining founding members chose to
maintain the institution he created and to preserve as much as possible its
guiding spirit of community, of friendly discussion, and of collaborative
learning.

Tim
Fallon was more teacher than scholar. The medium of his influence was
especially the face-to-face encounter and concrete dialogue in and outside the
classroom. He earned a doctorate at the Medieval Institute at the University of
Toronto with a dissertation on a minor figure, Herveus Natales (referred to by Tim as “Herbie Birthday”), but his reading of Lonergan was markedly
late modern rather than medieval, existential rather than scholastic and
metaphysical. To be introduced to Lonergan by Tim
Fallon was to be lured into the ongoing process of self-appropriation and
self-development. It was to be introduced to oneself as abiding in the tension
of limitation and self-transcendence. It was to experience first-hand what Lonergan meant when he insisted that the method of
metaphysics is primarily pedagogical. After Tim’s death, the remaining founding
members of the Institute agreed that our annual meetings should continue in his
memory and that we should strive to maintain the orientation Tim Fallon has
given them. The annual Fallon Memorial Lonergan Symposia are dedicated to concrete dialogue, to emphasizing the existential
dimension of our shared reflections against the excessive abstractness of
conceptualism in its medieval and modern guises, to promoting the ancient
understanding of philosophy as primarily a way of life and only secondarily a
body of doctrine, and to maintaining in our discussions the properly human mean
between excessive intellectual gravitas and just plain silliness.